Forum – Week 8 – Semester 2, 2008: “Eraserhead”
Such a haircut probably deserves this...
I have mixed feelings about such abstract art house cinema. Would I have found it more entertaining if I indulged in some form of illicit contraband containing THC? Probably. There is a contentious issue for me with this type of film. Like most of Lynch’s work it projects a fantastically dark and dread inducing environment that is just short of all-consuming. It then proceeds to offset this remarkable achievement by engaging in far too many uncomfortable silences and lengthy scenes of demented abstraction that explain nothing and become tedious very quickly. In short, the film may be a cult classic, it may (and I believe does) contain extraordinarily intricate sound design and low budget cinematography for the period, but it bored me nevertheless. Maybe it’s the same issue that keeps me from enjoying Nosferatu: I can’t view this with the perception of a wide-eyed 1970s film buff. I can only view it as myself, and like others of mine and subsequent generations I have too much exciting and groundbreaking art/media to choose from. I feel like I haven’t been shocked by art for a long time and this film is far from shocking by today’s standards.
Reference:
Harris David. “Forum – Week 8 – Semester 2, 2008: Eraserhead.” Workshop presented at EMU space, level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 18th of September 2008.
Labels: Forum IIIB
Audio Arts – Week 7 – Semester 2, 2008: “Designing a Movie for Sound”
George says: "Hmm, It needs more cowbell."Randy Thom certainly has an agenda with ‘non-sound’ people involved in the film production industry. The article raises many interesting points. It sounds as if directors often don’t know what they want until something arises that they don’t like. From that point it’s likely that the only sure thing is that something else is needed, whatever that may be. For most of us, the few utopian environments that Randy describes in the production worlds of Coppola, Lucas et al, in which all parties know exactly what is going to happen with each medium and where, will unfortunately never be our playground. It seems Randy is pointing out that lack of communication and pre-emptive ideas concerning sound are endemic in all levels of film making. It doesn’t bode well for the aspiring sound artist, who should crave an engaging and collaborative process in which all parties are equally valued and acknowledged from the beginning.
It’s probably best to accept a few shortcomings in this area before one begins a project. At the same time, if one is given the opportunity to meet with a director early in the production process perhaps we need to take the initiative to bombard them with strategic questions – record that conversation it may prove useful in settling later disputes…
Reference:
Harrald, Luke. “Audio Arts – Week 7 – Semester 2, 2008: Designing a Movie for Sound.” Lecture presented at EMU space, level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 9th of September, 2008.
Labels: Audio Arts IIIB
Forum – Week 7 – Semester 2, 2008: “Student Presentations”
Behold, the power of sine tones...
Sanad kicked things off nicely this week with a pumping dance track laden with interesting vocal manipulation and sonically rich harmonization. I felt he should give his work a little more deserving credit as he was quite dismissive of many of his ideas as ‘cheesy’.
Peter played us some sine tones, hooray.
I’m glad John presented his dark side once again with another piece of “there’s a saw next to me, I think this guy wants us to cut our own feet off” ambience straight from the bowels of industrial Hell. It was great to hear it through the Bose monitors and all the fat bass therein.
Mr Mazzone snuck in fashionably late as usual, but not too late to deliver us with another dose of SC mayhem. I need to practice using the Schedule classes more.
Freddie continued the theme of the day with the old “when it works properly x is supposed to happen” etc. It’s easy to laugh when this happens to other peoples presentation/performances but I’ve certainly had my share of technology induced issues.
I liked Doug’s instant ‘Scarface’ score maker. I’m glad he mentioned 70s film as analogous to it’s output as I was thinking the same thing (well, early eighties anyway).
Reference:
Whittington, Stephen. “Forum – Week 7 – Semester 2, 2008: Student Presentations.” Workshop presented at EMU Space and the Audio lab, levels 5 and 4, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 11th of September 2008.
Labels: Forum IIIB
Creative Computing – Week 7 – Semester 2, 2008: “Graphical User Interface (3)”
Taking my lead from the sequencer ideas in the BoxGrid class help, I have built myself a simple drum machine. It plays back drums as they are selected in a grid according the place their grid position holds within a bar. To keep things simple I have limited the resolution to 16th notes and 16th note triplets. To make things complicated I have introduced the function of determining probability of a selected drum being played. If the probability is at 100 percent then the drum will play on its bar division each time – if it’s below this then the chance of it not playing increases.
This patch took a long time to write due to the amount of code involved, but I have reduced much of its content to variables and routine loops, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to make performance changes like tempo or note resolution for instance. I’m thinking of a computer assisted compositional concept for my major project and feel that this patch of code may be a good start. It will need more comprehensive functionality such as global setting of probability, and some easily accessible preset rhythm ideas to enable fast creation of music in a live scenario.
Click here to link to the code/samples bundle for this week (you’ll need the samples in the same path as the code doc for this patch to work).
Reference:
Haines, Christian. “Creative Computing – Week 7 – Semester 2, 2008: Graphical User Interface (3).” Lecture material provided via online correspondence through MyUni, University of Adelaide website, Thursday 11th of September 2008.
Labels: Creative Computing IIIB
Creative Computing – Week 6, Semester 2, 2008: “Physical Modelling (1)”
There were still some niggling issues with GUI control and real time updating of parameters in use this week. Once again the only answer seems to be passing arguments to a SynthDef if there are any parameters that need to be adjusted on the fly. This scenario seems a tad limiting and makes me wonder how compromising it may be to any number of situations.
The GUI integration was complicated by my own ambition a little. I wanted to use real sliders and flexi number boxes so I altered the code and extended the ‘sliderData’ variable accordingly. I’m undecided on wether I think this approach actually saves time. It seems that the time spent coding for calculating multidimensional array indexes and accessing the correct data they contain is considerable. It may look concise compared to some of my bloated efforts, but part of me thinks a long page of clearly labelled and straightforward code may be a better option in many cases. Obviously the more complex the GUI the sillier this approach becomes…
Click here to link to online folder containing SC and audio files for this week.
Reference:
Haines, Christian. “Creative Computing – Week 6, Semester 2, 2008: Physical Modelling (1).” Lecture presented at tutorial room 408, level 4, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 4th of September 2008.
Labels: Creative Computing IIIB
Forum – Week 6 – Semester 2, 2008: “Emo Presentations”
There was a relatively diverse palette of sonic emotional proposals presented today. I do wish I’d avoided MIDI and maybe kept things a little less complicated. While the approaches from all involved differed in some respects, there were recurring themes that suggest we are perhaps conditioned to perceive and make analogous sonic connections by our environment and culture.
I think I found Freddie’s the most entertaining. The sound of a child’s cries on tape often implies a gargoyle-esque quality. Stephen Tanato’s general MIDI clichés were a little, well, clichéd. I think the positive emotions were easier to convey in a specific sense – Major chords for happy, power chords for heroic, water and bird noises for tranquillity etc. The difference between anger and disgust is a difficult one. There were a couple of well-crafted distinctions today though, with John Delany’s representation of disgust the standout for me. It seems there is also an art to determining a sonic representation for both sorrow and compassion that is unambiguous.
Reference:Whittington, Stephen. “Forum – Week 6 – Semester 2, 2008: Emo Presentations.” Workshop presented at EMU space, level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 4th of September, 2008.
Labels: Forum IIIB
Audio Arts – Week 6 – Semester 2, 2008: “Foley and Music Presentations”
Jake’s angle on composing for Nosferatu was typically left field and very intriguing. I felt the timing worked particularly well with the break down to Nosferatu’s first appearance. Some work needs to be done on the change of scenes though.
John’s Foley sounded unsurprisingly familiar. It’s kind of weird hearing someone else’s work using the same sound bank and footage. His choices for onscreen action were similar to mine, so hopefully I can rest assured that I’m on the right track. I wasn’t convinced by the music, but along with my own it is an idea in its infancy at this stage.
Luke presented an effective approach to the environment. The only concern may be that the ambience is lending a feeling of tension and impending doom to scene cuts where characters are not necessarily in this mindset, such as the paperwork scene early in Clip 2.
Ben’s ideas seem potentially suitable but need some expansion.
Matt chose to bore us with a theoretical run down of his proposed ideas with no audio to clarify his as yet non-existent results.
Our friend from classical composition’s ideas for a continuous music score (treating the film in the traditional ‘silent’ manner) could raise the bar in terms of expectations regarding the score. Hmm, back to work!
Reference:
Harrald, Luke. “Audio Arts – Week 6 – Semester 2, 2008: Foley and Music Presentations.” Workshop presented at EMU space, level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 2nd of September 2008.
Labels: Audio Arts IIIB
